1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the field of information processing, and more specifically to a system and method of interactive, multi-objective visualization.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many practical optimization problems involve more than one optimization objective function. It is also a common case that such multiple optimization objectives compete. For example, designing an automobile may involve simultaneous optimization of its acceleration capability (e.g., time to reach the speed of 60 miles/hour from zero initial speed) and fuel economy (e.g., average number of miles that can be covered with a gallon of fuel in a typical highway driving scenario). It is generally impossible to simultaneously achieve the highest acceleration and the best possible fuel economy in the same design: the two objectives are said to be in a “tradeoff” with respect to each other.
There are two schools of thought on how to deal with multiple optimization objectives mathematically:                1. Reduce the problem to the single-objective case by “folding” all problem objectives into a single new objective function, for example, by linearly mixing all original objectives with coefficients that are to be interpreted as “importance weights”. The advantage of this approach is that the existing machinery for single objective optimization can be readily applied and it will result in a single solution point for the end user. Disadvantages include the fact that neither the new “mix-in” objective nor the importance weights have any intuitive interpretations. Furthermore, if some of the original objectives have failed to reach desirable values at the solution point (say, due to intrinsic tradeoffs), exploring solution alternatives by varying the importance weights could be a very cumbersome trial-and-error procedure.        2. Maintain all natural problem objectives separately and use a special multiple-objective optimizer (MOP) to solve the problem.        